Giving Back in Real Ways

March 7, 2019

Today
on the OSU Press blog, we are looking at an important conversation that is happening
in community-based research.

In
Giving Back: Research and Reciprocity in Indigenous Settings, R.D.K. Herman pulls together twelve case studies in order to
provide ways for researchers to move forward while working ethically in
partnership with communities, and to identify areas where there is still work
to be done. Below, read excerpts from contributor Maria Fadiman and R.D.K.
Herman on the ethical issues researchers face when trying to give back to the
communities in which they work.

From Chapter 8:“Are You Making A Million Dollars?”
Reciprocity as Cultural and Environmental Reconnection by contributor Maria
Fadiman

“Are you making a million dollars?” Don Jorge asked.

“No,”
I replied.

He
laid his hand on the bark of the tree and said, “We heard that a researcher in
the next village made a million dollars,” he paused, “and didn’t give any to
the people.”

“No money for me.”

“Then
why are you doing it?” he asked.

That
was a good question.

Why do I do what I do? I am an ethnobotanist studying the
relationship between plants and people. My overall goal is to promote
conservation and cultural retention from within communities. Through helping
local people maintain their own plant knowledge, this can lead to a more
concrete re-connection to the plants themselves and raise the value of the
ecosystems in which these plants live. One of the issues I need to address on
every project is: how do I compensate people for the time they take out of
their daily schedule working with me and sharing their information?

R.D.K. Herman:

As Maria’s story illustrates, those of us who conduct field
research in Indigenous settings know that our success depends upon the
assistance, cooperation and even aid of peoples in those communities. The
framework and methods of research have historically encouraged an extractive
approach to data collecting: the researcher goes in, obtains the data and
leaves, returning nothing to the community, and sometimes even publishing or
patenting knowledge and “discoveries” derived from the local informants to the detriment
of the local people.While newer
research methodologies recognize that this is exploitative, and have developed
approaches to at least engage the local communities as partners in research
projects, the notion of reciprocity
in research is slower to take root.Especially for those of us who engage closely in the lives of the
peoples we work with—building relationships for the short, medium or long
term—we have to negotiate these relationships constantly.And particularly in Indigenous
communities, that involves giving.

The act of reciprocity in Indigenous research involves a
cross-cultural encounter wherein two (or more) sets of values, senses of
obligation, social rules and ritual protocols collide.Western notions of individual ownership
and intellectual property come up against Indigenous notions of collective
ownership—or no ownership, for how can certain things be owned by anyone?—and
responsibility.

The growing field of Indigenous Studies recognizes that as
scholars—whether Native or non-Native—we are entering into a relationship with
a community and its members that is rooted in trust, responsibility, integrity,
and genuine concern for the wellbeing of that community and its knowledge and
traditions.Meanwhile, Native
communities themselves are increasingly demanding more say over or about the
nature of research projects in their communities and on their lands, and are
willing to say No to projects that do not clearly serve their interests.

The aim of this volume is to discuss how research with
communities can better accomplish reciprocity with those communities.Despite recent university and
professional-association ethics policies, individual researchers must define
for themselves what the quality and nature of their relationships will be with
the communities with whom they work. They must ask themselves, What does
reciprocity look and feel like in my working relationships with communities?
What institutional barriers must be navigated in efforts to develop reciprocal
relationships with community partners? How do you know when the outcomes of a
research project have upheld your ethical obligations or goals of reciprocity?
How do you navigate the unequal power relations inherent in academic research
with Indigenous and “other” communities, in defining appropriate ways of
‘giving back’? How can research be mutually beneficial, given the historical
and ongoing relationships of power in centers of knowledge production? How are
the multiple perspectives within an individual community navigated in efforts
to ensure positive outcomes for research partners? Even for researchers who are
members of the communities with whom they work, ‘giving back’ may present
unique challenges and opportunities. Can research itself be a form of ‘giving
back’?

Many of us are never
sure whether our attempts at reciprocity got it right, so this volume turns to
those who have had more experience in this matter, or given it more thought, or
engaged in innovative practices to create different paradigms from that of extractive
research.There is much more that
can be said on this topic, and this is not a cookbook or a how-to. Yet we hope
that some maps to this complex territory may emerge.

RDK Herman is senior geographer at the Smithsonian
National Museum of the American Indian. He has served the Indigenous Peoples
Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers since 2000, and has
authored work on decolonizing research methodologies. In 2000 he created Pacific Worlds, a web-based
indigenous-geography education project for Hawai‘i and the American Pacific.